CHAPTER TEN

ZANE LEWIS

“Why don’t you let Harper have control of the stereo for a while?” I look up from what I’m doing at the sound of my mother’s voice, cutting through Outkast playing over the speakers in the living room.

“Harper,” I call out.

She’s on the other end of the room, sorting through pictures for the slide show my parents want to play on the TV during the big party they’re throwing in a few days.

“You got a problem with what I’m playing on the system?”

“Nope,” Harper calls back, barely looking up from what she’s doing. Part of me is pleased, another part of me wants her to argue just for the sake of arguing. I can remember how she looks when she gets ticked off. After seeing her naked the night before, I want to see her ticked off again. I know before I go to bed tonight I’m going to be reliving the sight of her in nothing at all, and imagining her in my bed.

“Just give her your phone, Zane,” Mom insists. “Let Harper pick the songs for a bit.”

“We’re not in middle school anymore, Mom,” I tell her, rolling my eyes. “If she wants to change the playlist she can say something.”

I’m putting together some piece of furniture that Mom got from IKEA to be a buffet or something for the big party. Mom and Nadine have been in the kitchen for a while, cleaning china or polishing silver, something like that. There are a million things to do around the house to get it ready for the party Mom and Dad want to throw.

“Just make sure you’re giving her equal time with the sound system,” Mom says, turning to leave before I can manage to argue again. I work on the weird piece of furniture for a few more minutes and take my phone out of my pocket.

“You want to put something else on?”

Harper looks up at my question from the pile of photos she’s organizing.

“If you’re bored, then sure,” Harper says, shrugging. She gets up and I watch her come to me. She’s wearing a skirt and a T-shirt. She took her shoes off when she came in, and her socks come up to just under her knees.

Does she have any fucking idea how much she looks like a schoolgirl gone bad right now? The skirt isn’t even plaid, and of course the T-shirt wouldn’t be in any school uniform, but the sight of her shapely legs, and knowing what she’s got underneath her clothes, is enough to make my mouth water and my cock respond.

I unlock my phone and hand it to her, turning back to building. The song playing over the stereo stops, and a moment later something else entirely, rock with heavy guitars and a crooning-shrieking vocalist, comes on. Harper does a little dance as she heads back to the table she’s been sitting at with the pictures. I grin to myself.

“I would have expected Katy Perry or someone like that,” I tell her, finishing one end of the piece of furniture I’m working on.

“Oh hell no,” Harper says. “Even when I was in high school, you should have known better.”

I laugh. “What were you listening to in high school?” I ask.

“Lots of old stuff,” Harper replies, not looking at me. “Old Strokes, Silverchair, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin that Dad played for me. Nirvana.”

After a while both our mothers come into the living room, and I see Nadine roll her eyes at the music. My mom’s pretty into it though, dancing with her bottle of water. I have to admit I’ve gotten into it a bit too.

“Did you tell Harper you’re up for re-enlistment soon?”

Harper looks up at Mom’s question, and I see her cheeks go pink, but I have no idea why she’d be embarrassed.

“No, I’ve been trying to keep that close to the vest,” I tell her.

“You told your father and me, why not the Polsens?”

“I just don’t really want to talk about it with anyone yet,” I say, moving the finished behemoth of particle board and enamel over to the wall where it’s going to be for the big party. It actually looks pretty good with everything else in the room.

“Why not? I think it’s a good thing to talk about,” Mom says. She reaches for the control and turns down the music just a little bit, enough to where we don’t have to practically shout to hear each other, and Nadine sits down with her.

“If I never see another piece of wedding china or wedding silver again, it will be too soon,” Nadine informs us all. “Your mother,” she says to me with a smile, “apparently opted for the most over-the-top set that money could buy.”

“I thought I was going to have great dinner parties and luncheons,” Mom says, sighing. “Little did I realize that without a personal chef and a housekeeper, events like that are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“So, Zane, you’re thinking of going back in when your tour of duty is up?”

I’d been hoping that Nadine had changed the subject for good, but there she was, reminding me of something I didn’t really want to talk about.

“I’m thinking about it,” I admit. “I haven’t come to any kind of conclusion yet.”

“Harper’s got some top-secret project going on at her job,” Nadine offers. “Tell them about it, sweetie.”

“I’m not really supposed to talk about it,” Harper says. She picks up a box of pictures that she’d marked ‘slideshow’ and brings them to the couch. “But I can tell you a few things.”

“Top-secret project? Tell me you’re ghostwriting some congressman’s mistress’ memoirs or something,” Mom says.

Harper laughs. Another song comes on, and this one I actually recognize, Foo Fighters’ “Everlong.”

“There’s a major author, whose name I can’t disclose because of confidentiality,” Harper explains, “who’s been writing books for our publishing company for a while now.”

“Can we guess the name and you tell us if it’s the right one or not?” my mom asks with a smile.

Harper laughs again. “I could get in trouble for that,” she says. “But anyway, he’s been writing for us for a long time, and the editor he started out working with recently retired, so they’ve assigned me to be his new editor for the next book.”

“Congrats,” I say, wondering again why Harper’s started blushing. What does she have to be embarrassed about?

“It’s a big deal,” Nadine says. “We’re all really proud of her.”

“Well of course you are!” Mom adds. “That is awesome! My surrogate daughter is going to have a major book come out with her name in it.”

“I won’t be on the cover,” Harper admits. “I mean, I’ll be named in the acknowledgements and all that. The credits, that kind of thing.”

“As soon as you can tell us who it is, and the name of the book, you’d better,” Mom tells her. She starts looking through the pictures Harper has chosen, and Nadine pulls Harper to sit down next to her.

I catch, maybe, half a second’s glimpse of Harper’s panties, another lacy-frilly set like the ones she was in the night before. It’s all I can do to not react.

“Do you get any kind of royalties for it?” I ask.

Harper shrugs. “It depends,” she says. “We haven’t really worked out those details yet, since the author in question only just accepted me to work on his book.”

“Does it come with a pay increase at least?” Zane asks.

Harper shrugs again. “Like I said, there are a lot of details to work out,” she continues. “But if I do well on this, then I’ll probably be promoted to a main editor, which would mean more and bigger projects.”

“Both our kids are doing well in their careers, how about that?” Mom says, gesturing from me to Harper. “And both of them came out looking gorgeous. Figure the odds on that one.”

Harper and I grin at each other, rolling our eyes. I need to find something else to do before I suggest to Harper that we go somewhere more private.